[nichols]

Good afternoon.

This morning when my husband attempted to boot up his Dell Insperon 8600 it wouldn't boot up at all. It would go so far then give him a message that his hal.dll file was corrupt or missing.

We reinstalled XP in an attempt to fix this problem and it worked ... kinda ...

We can now get it to boot completely but then verticle lines start appearing and every time he moves the mouse it makes wierd boxes on the screen. Sometimes it just makes the words on the screen start to "seperate" (i.e. different colors fractions of a mm apart). He's scanned it with the virus scanner several times and it's saying that there is no virus so what's the problem?

If I need to post additional info please let me know. Hope you guys can help because he's driving me NUTS! LOL

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What was used to reinstall Windows? Windows CD, or some recovery CD?

[Broni]

What was used to reinstall Windows? Windows CD, or some recovery CD?

[nichols]

Windows XP CD.

[Broni]

Then, you need to reinstall some drivers. It looks like video driver for sure.
Go Start>Run, type in:
devmgmt.msc
Click OK.

Look for any yellow "?", "!" marks. Those drivers have to be reinstalled.
If you have "Drivers CD", which came with the computer, you can use that. If not, head to the computer manufacturer web site.

[nichols]

I tried to do that but I can't tell what goes where because the words and images are all messed up and, for some strange reason, he doesn't think I know what I'm talking about. **mutters about why ask if you don't wanna do what I say**

He found the Dell CD and is trying to fix it that way...I do appreciate your help and if **HE** can't get it fixed I'll take it from him and see if I can figure it out.

For some reason he's convinced himself that it's a virus (even though half a dozen virus scans are saying there's nothing there!)

Edited by nichols, 09 May 2009 - 03:44 PM.

[Broni]

You have to start with video driver, so you can see something.

[nichols]

Didn't work. We reinstalled from the recovery disc and everything look great at first then it started messing up again

[Broni]

Is it on-board video, or real video card.
In any case, your video device may be simply failing.

[nichols]

I'm going to assume it's an onboard video card since it's built into the laptop. Strange thing is when we're doing anything that doesn't require actual "windows" works and looks great. I.E. our Anti Virus program, when run outside of windows, looks great. When we re-installed Windows, it looked great. It was only when we actually load and try to use windows that things go wacky.

[Broni]

Oh, it's a laptop. OK...
Now, I don't understand. What do you mean by "try to use windows"? IE, or antivirus are Windows programs.

[nichols]

We can run the anti-virus without going into windows. we can run the install program without going into windows. When we do something without actually using "Windows" it looks fine. No wierd lines, no off-set letters of multiple colors.

But when we boot the computer completely and load windows it looks somewhat ok at first. Then when we move the mouse there's this little red line that shows up and trails across the screen. In addition "pieces" of the picture or text on the screen "move" making it difficult after a few mintues to see anything. Then after another couple of minutes like this the whole screen turns a light shade of aqua.

I really don't know how else to explain it >.<

[Broni]

We can run the anti-virus without going into windows.

How?

In any case, I suspect, you have a video chip problem. It looks, like it warms up after a minute, or so, possibly even overheating, and the screen gets messed up.
Unfortunately, since it's laptop, I see no other way but taking it to the shop for testing. It may be not even worth fixing.

[nichols]

With the Anti-Virus we run it straight from the CD.

And I don't see how it could be overheating because if that was the case it would be doing it continuously since he hasn't stopped messing with it at all! LOL

He refuses to give up and thinks that he got a virus from somewhere that's corupted something.

[Broni]

Personally, I've never seen any virus messing up computer's video, then this is a fresh install, right?

[nichols]

I call it a "reinstall" ... from the recovery CD ... done it several times now tbh ... and I don't "think" it's a virus, he's convinced it is though

I thank you for your time. Maybe eventually he'll get tired of messing with it and shut it down for a while. Only thing I can think to do is take it into a computer repair place and have them take a look at it.